[Yummy Stuff]: Home-Made Lasagna

My family, friends, and I celebrated my birthday last Sunday since it is the nearest day of the weekend to my actual birthday, April 4. Mr.Gee and I went home to dear ol' Bacolod to spend time with my family. Even my in-laws came to visit us too.

Now, our household wouldn't be complete without any cooking action going on. Hence, another recipe that I cooked for my birthday. Beef Lasagna. 

P.S. We actually opted for beef since I had a certain friend over who doesn't eat pork. So, to be on the safe side, I used beef. But you can use pork if you want to.

Ok, another introduction: My Lasagna recipe.

Ingredients:

Oven ready lasagna

This does not need pre-cooking. Rather, you just assemble it on a tray with the sauce and bake it. However, the parts of the lasagna at the bottom did not soften very well, so I suggest blanching this a bit. Or, you can use the regular lasagna wherein you have to cook it in water first.

For the Red Sauce:

1) 6 to 7 cloves of garlic chopped into small bits; mincing would be much better too ;)

2) 1 knorr cube

3) 1 medium onion chopped

4) 1 250ml box of Nestle Cream

5) 1 kg Hunts Parmesan Cheese Spaghetti Sauce

6) 1/2 kg. ground beef

7) oil, salt, pepper and McCormick Basil, a tbsp. of all-purpose flour

And its as easy as:

1) Put oil on the pan. I used teflon so very little oil will do.

  

2) When the oil is hot enough, saute the garlic and onion.

 

3) Add the ground beef.

4) After which, add a little water (barely reaching the top part of the beef) for the beef to cook in. Then add the knorr cube.

5) When the beef is cooked, add the sauce. This depends on how much sauce you would like. I was only able to use 3/4 of the 1kg of spaghetti sauce.

6) Add the nestle cream.

7) Stir constantly to avoid the sauce getting burnt at the bottom. Season with salt, pepper and basil (I prefer lots of basil). Then dilute a tbsp. of flour in water and pour unto sauce. This would make the sauce thicker. Bring to a simmer then remove from heat.

 

For the Bechamel Sauce, you would need:

1) 6 tbsp. butter

2) 4 tbsp. all-purpose flour (in mounds though)

3) 1 250 ml. Nestle Cream

4) 1 can Carnation evap

5) Quickmelt cheese

And its as easy as:

1) Melt butter in pan over low heat. Add a little oil to avoid the butter from getting burnt.

2) Add in the flour and whisk constantly to prevent clumps.

3) Add the milk a little at a time while constantly whisking. This is a good workout ladies!

Until it reaches this consistency

4) Add in the cream and season with salt, pepper and basil. Whisk constantly till it reaches this consistency. Remove from heat.

To assemble:

1) Line the bottom of the pan (or Pyrex) with the lasagna. Cover the the red sauce and add quickmelt cheese on top.  
The thickness of the sauce would depend on how wide the pan is and how many layers you would like. Sorry, I do not measure, but for me, the minimum would be three layers (2 layers red sauce with 1 layer of white sauce in between) for a pan with approximately 10inx18in dimension. This recipe has 5 layers.

2) Put another layer of lasagna on top of the red sauce. Then spread the Bechamel sauce on top.

3) Do steps 1 to 2 till you reach the preferred number of layers. Since I got extra Bechamel sauce. I spread it on top of my last layer which was the red sauce. Then add grated quickmelt cheese on top.

4) Bake in 200-degree Celsius oven or turbo broiler for 35 minutes. I based the baking instructions on the lasagna box. But, you can check the boxes of other brands for their baking instructions too.

Ta-dah!